WHAT'S AN INDEPENDENT?
by Swamp Dogg

MI is proud to announce that Mr. Dogg will by joining us as a monthly columnist. Welcome aboard Swamp!

As an independent company, I can address this question with a shitload of validity. An independent is a company that is grossly Underfinanced, owned and partnered by people whose houses/condos have four mortgages (the fourth being held by a pressing plant), auto pink slips are being held hostage by 2nd Security Fargo Interstate National Bank of Delaware, are on a first name basis with Cindy, Pat, David and operator 32, all collection personnel for American Express, Visa, Mastercard and Diners respectively, owes the mother-In-law a mid-five figures and assures her that with the release of M.C. Dickhead's new rap lp they will repay her fifty-fold because this is a no-risk on the horizons situation, thus making a loan for an additional $30,000 a solid investment riddled with integrity and paralleled only by U.S. Treasury Bonds. Independents are people with PhD's in groveling, juggling, and dazzling one's peers with bullshit. Independents are real heroes because they take chances on the new, the untried and forgotten. Without these com-panies, there wouldn't be any majors
cause they were too astute to make foolish signings of the never-recorded Neil Dia-mond, B.B. King, Robert Palmer, Al Green, George Benson, Patti Labelle, etc., when they came into the industry....which brings us to the other point....majors.

A major is a company that is over-financed, over-staffed and amasses fortunes via overkill. A major company is any company who has brought up 10 or more independents bi-focused on one or two (maximum) of the independents' stars with out success, scraps the entire label and goes out to repeat this madness time after time after time. Majors consist of people who deliberately keep low profiles, high expense accounts and never cast votes for or against. A major is a company that would not sign the Beatles - that's why their first record was released in the United States on Veejay, a Chicago independent. A major is a company that doesn't know its ass from a hole in a record. A major is what all of us independ-ents dream of aligning ourselves with in order to have the big machine with the cashfow, but dread the inevitable loss of identity, acts and autonomy. The bottom line is that as long as there are people with dreams and visions, there will always be majors, because visions need financing and dreamers hang on to the thought that this time it'll be different.

-Swamp Dogg

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